Wednesday, 29 September 2010

What blogger and facebook made me do...

You know how when you're online one thing leads to another... Well, yesterday somebody who is a 'friend' of mine on facebook (don't know the first thing about him... guess he's a poet somewhere... he requested me... as it were) posted the first part of a TV show by comedian Stewart Lee. It's very funny about celebrity books (and if you're from elsewhere Chris Moyles is a really annoying pop radio presenter... from Leeds, the shame of it).

It made me laugh so much that instead of going and doing something practical about the house I watched part two (because I can, hah!). This one is very rambly at the beginning (says me...) but gets going about four minutes in (and is then very funny about rap and BBC radio).

Then, of course, I had to watch the last part... which takes the funniest pop at Harry Potter yet ('Harry Potter and the na, na, na' being my favourite but it's all good).

So, that was yesterday (I did also do some other stuff). Then today Titus had some of a poem by Vivien Jones at hers (here) and that reminded me of this old poem of mine. It's in my book but I haven't done much else with it. It's too rhymey and comprehensible for poetry magazines (I finally realise that what they like best is complexity and, if possible, incomprehensibility... neither of which I'm good at). Ah well.

Pay heed to the special need

Personally I need a lot of help with movingI need public transport, I need constant soothingI need my hand holding and I need some quiet timeThese needs are special and these needs are mine

You might need a teacher, you might need a schoolYou might need some help with obeying a ruleYou might have a thing about folding and drawersThose needs are special and those needs are yours

I can't do sitting in well-behaved rowsSnobbery and claptrap get right up my noseI'm not very good at just following a lineSo many needs out there but these ones are mine

You might be allergic, you might be aloneYou might need assistance from more than a phoneYou might need a moment, a break, just a pauseBecause all needs are special, especially yours

I buy poetry magazines sometimes... read the odd bit... wonder why so many people write the same kind of thing... why we have to have fashions in writing at all... and house styles. Then I go back to the Radio Times (quality TV guide...if that isn't an oxymoron...).x

I sometimes get the feeling that poetry editors are SCARED of the comprehensible. Like they'll look stupid if they print it (no mentions of Emperors and clothes please...kids' characters is SO last post).

I can't be doing with all the airy-fairy incomprehensibility crapola. If I start to read a poem and I can't work out for the life of me what's going on it it, then the poet has wasted his or her time - and mine. I really liked this poem of yours though, just because a person can understand it, doesn't make it any less deep.

I'm in several minds on it... I don't think it is clear-cut. I certainly agree with you that something can be, on the one hand, fairly simple but, on the other, still deep. Hell, if not I'm buggered!

However I'm not anti-the incomprehensible (or the harder work) poetry. I like some of it. I am not anti- hard work in any sense (despite some evidence to contrary...). What I really dislike though is the automatic superiority felt/given to/assumed for more complicated/harder to comprehend poetry. That I think is a highway to nonsense (and not particularly good nonsense). I've always been anti-snobbery (as in one group looking down on another for some stoopid reason) and I suppose it's part of that. It's that I don't think intellectual automatically means harder... sometimes a really good intellectual is the person who makes the complicated stuff simpler. Isn't that so? As I say... it's not clear-cut.

We've had this conversation before: I suppose one person's ideas about the accessibility of a poem differ from another's. I dislike cleverness for its own sake and showboating, prefer insight quietly realised. I don't know. One thing I'm pretty sure about, however, is that in the fullness of time JoAnne will answer all our difficult questions.

I enjoyed the comment conversation I almost forgot what I was going to say, but then I sneezed again & remembered - I'm allergic! I haven't stopped sneezing since I got to work. So I definitely relate to your poem :)

As a lay-person (by that I mean a person who doesn't consider herself a poet & doesn't think about the universe of poetry) I don't mind incomprehensible if it's BEAUTIFUL. But, beautiful AND comprehensible is preferred. I don't really mean beautiful though - I guess I mean that the words grab hold & don't let go.

Hmm, shug. Had I read this earlier I may well have revised my offer of a lift.And I should just like to remind the world that a gentleman who just been driven 60 miles by a lady does not go on all night about the fact that he had to buy her one Gin and Tonic, one bowl of chips, one orange juice and one bag of crisps. Especially when she is about to drive said gentleman 60 miles home again.

p.s. this is not a serious comment. If anything my experience in Scotland makes me wonder where on earth that cliche about the Scottish and meanness came from. It's not something I've came across at all. x